First Impressions
by Demyrie
Summary: TFA. First impressions are vital for making a sale. Swindle knows this, and so does Lockdown, so the whole getting-kicked-around-by-a-femme thing really wasn’t a good start… Swindle and Lockdown’s first meeting, ala Partners-verse.


A/N: AWWW Torque the Obnoxious Cling-On! And Newbie Swindle too!

Fffft he's such a sleazy overcompensating douche. This takes place before Lockdown gets his hook—according to my version of events, the hook is actually a pretty recent acquisition and soooo important to who he is. This takes plaaaaace… way-long-time-ago. A few millennia, probably.

I'm not so sure about this piece, but it's written well-enough for government work. Read on!

* * *

First Impressions

* * *

The bulky tan 'bot looked up from his booth seat at the small Cybertronian bar, as he had done every few cycles when a new 'bot stomped into the low-lit, cramped interior, and was disappointed yet again.

While half were fierce, none of them were what he was looking for: he had an appointment with black plating, spikes, red optics and a filthy reputation. The budding entrepreneur had been putting out notices to any… freelancing 'bots that would be interested in his services, offering a freedom of negotiation alongside an incredible variety of merchandise—but this one he took some extra care with. This was the mech he _needed_ in order to blast off, he felt it in his solenoids.

Finally, the crick in his neck-disks paid off: surprisingly on time, a wiry, heavy musclecar entered the dark building, scanning the huddled mechanical patrons with a pass of his narrowed red optics. A relatively tiny femme, magenta and busty, came up short behind him, crossing her arms as though waiting for him to move his crusty aft out of the doorway. Swindle put up a servo, motioning the huge mech over with a cheery grin and a world of expectations.

"Lockdown, am I right?" the tan mech gushed, seizing the other's servo before he had so much as sat down. He shook it so hard the pins creaked, big purple optics glowing bright in anticipation. The femme gave him a brief glance and clicked off to the bar, somehow connected to his newest client but of none of the arms-dealer's concern with said ruthless bounty hunter finally in his seat.

"You can call me _Swindle_, big guy. I'm the finest intergalactic arms-dealer in this quadrant! Only this quadrant, actually, so a bit of a _contradiction_, I'm sure, but I'm looking for big 'bots like you to help me _expand_. Pleasure to make your accountant—I mean _acquaintance_!"

He gave a hearty laugh, and had the good grace not to be disappointed when Lockdown only flashed a bit of his dentals, tips of his claw mod tracing the edge of the table. They talked for a while—or Swindle wove a rope of words and fashioned the proverbial noose while Lockdown simply sat and listened. Or… pretended to listen.

But in the far off, starry beginning, the arms-dealer's business-savvy wasn't limitless and neither was his confidence: given a lack of proper feedback, he became almost annoyed with the sound of his own vocals when they didn't seem to be producing any effect. He hadn't learned the art of banging his helm against the thing standing in his way until it gave—or the driving all-importance of money as compared to the lure of ego, which ruled his existence until he learned there was a time and place for each.

So his sales-pitch was slightly derailed, partially because he had so _expected_ to hit it off with this 'Lockdown' character (or considered himself too charming not to be 'hit off' with) and was disappointed with the silence from the fearsome-looking mech's end. He wasn't _nearly _as excited about Swindle's contacts on Tellum 3 and his loan-lease system as any well-wired 'bot should have been. One could almost say he wasn't even mildly impressed! The result was an unprofessional bit of silence, which gave Swindle leave to glance around and find the magenta femme-bot that had wandered off to leave the mechs to their negotiation, now perched at the main bar with a cube of weak energon in servo.

Truthfully, the arms-dealer had started out as quite a different mech in the early centuries of his function. He hadn't yet honed and refined his greeds--power, money, renown—to become the gleaming, tireless monster machine everyone knew and respected. At that time, he was young and somewhat idiotic and, more importantly, hungry for everything he could get his servos on. For him, there was time for both business and pleasure—until, not so far into the efficient future, business became his sole pleasure.

Right now, however, a slight distraction was in order.

"So—is that your, ah, _partner_?" Swindle asked slyly, using a questionable servo-gesture or two to get his point across, if just to connect to Lockdown's reputedly low-grade level of processing. The big mech snorted down to his engine and gave a smirk both amused and ugly, not even glancing up.

"Nope," he rumbled, flicking a servo dismissively. "You can have her."

Swindle only shuttered his optics twice, to his credit. He'd expected something mildly possessive—this looked like the kind of mech to brood over his trophies and weapons, much less a curvy femme who was capable of putting up with his ugly appearance—but Lockdown's gravelly vocals were beyond bored, almost scornful. Once he was certain this wasn't some sort of twisted test, Swindle's flat face brightened and he got to his pedes.

"Alright, then! You think about what I said, then, big 'bot," he said, winking. "I'm gotta go wet my pipes and maybe… make another deal."

The 'abrasive mech-mech camaraderie' technique wasn't quite working out. Even with a sexual innuendo, Lockdown remained unmoved, merely reaching for his dirty oil and taking another gulp. Mentally shrugging as boisterously as he could, Swindle padded over to the bar, where the femme had one thick leg tucked underneath her on the bar seat, pink aft quite prettily displayed in the blurry neon lights.

"Well _hello_ there," he purred, sliding up alongside her. The bar-seat squeaked mightily when he put his weight on it—they were more designed for two-wheelers anyways, but this probably wouldn't take long.

"Hello to yourself," she said uncertainly, yellow optics whizzing over his square-ish frame. She looked back briefly, as though she would have been informed if the deal included her and she would _like_ to know why it suddenly did, but the beastly musclecar ignored her, making her angular facial plating tighten into a scowl.

"Business can make a mech thirsty, can't it now?" Swindle commented slickly, palming a cube of energon and running a digit along the top to snag her attention again. "Bet you could use a little… lubricating, yourself."

"Ah," she said intelligently, fixing him with a look he didn't quite recognize. Swindle would have understood it, had he known that not only was he _young_ to her, he was approximately a poor millionth of her function and this whole situation was a little like being cooed at by a pretentious, freshly-minted protoform with big moony purple optics: not only ridiculous but vaguely nauseating.

He _negotiated_ with her a little more, dropping hints that met with stranger and stranger expressions. He could only assume it was her overwhelming attraction to him trying to force its way out as she regarded him skeptically, nonetheless letting the arms-dealer speak his gooey, sleazy piece. He liked talking more than he liked getting what he wanted, apparently, so it took him a good fifteen cycles to get to his point.

"It's a bit late out, isn't it? I know this garage with nice, cool berths a little down the way," he finished surreptitiously, scooting over until their shoulder-plating almost scraped. He flashed her a velvet smile, big optics once again tracing her curves. "You want to… come along for the _ride_? I'll pay."

Her optics widened with a startled blip, then she chuckled as though almost relieved and shook her helm, finishing off the rest of her muddy energon.

"No, thank you. I'm flattered, but I don't make a habit of _riding_ with strangers," she said wryly. She shifted as though to dismount the seat and walk away, but Swindle's comparatively huge servo on her lower back stopped her, and the glow of his huge optics as he leaned over her shoulder was suddenly predatory.

"Now, now, not so fast, missy. I'm a reasonable mech," he chuckled all-too amiably, earning himself a perplexed and somewhat prickly look from the femme. He grinned obliviously, servo out. "If _price_ is the problem…"

"Excuse me," she whispered after a moment, thick vocals deadly cold. Swindle put up said servo.

"I understand, I _get_ it—if you've got wares, sell them. Supply and _demand_! Well, I'm demanding. How much?"

She took a steadying intake, expression both arrested and blank—as though suspending her disbelief that this was actually happening. She cleared her vocalizer.

"I don't believe—"

"Oh, don't be hesitant, it's not too much! I was thinking a megacycle or three." He winked again, with a charming blip. "Do I get a discount if I buy in bulk? Because I get the feeling you'll go down real easy, missy, and I don't even think I'll need a test-drive."

Too wrapped up in himself, the young mech missed the heat-shimmer of sudden, sharp outrage radiating from the old bike's core. He reached for her, to toy with her back wheel then maybe her round aft. If he hadn't, perhaps she would have contented herself with walking away; as it was, she turned and her elbow snapped out, cracking him square in the right optic.

Swindle jerked back, vocalizer freezing at the shock and the pain of it, then lost his balance and fell to the floor, two-ton poundage rattling the entire bar.

Up on her stiletto pedes, the old femme glared down at him, optics blazing, but couldn't manage anything more. She settled for a wordless motor-snarl of rage—it seemed to say well enough that she'd hardly been so insulted in her entire function--and stalked off and out of the bar. She threw a furious glare at Lockdown and it made him smile, then he laughed abrasively as Swindle unsteadily forced his bulky, ungainly body up off the floor with loud mechanical squeaks, gawking when he realized the damage the little she-glitch had done to him. Damage displays clogged his visual field, warning of fractures and the impending loss of visual feed from his right optic; he tasted the energon before he registered it dribbling down his facial plating, shock star-bursting in his processor alongside the sharp pain.

"Way to get off on the wrong pede. You got a lot to learn about femmes, kid," Lockdown rasped from the booth, uncaring of all of the dubious, scornful stares the rest of the bar was fixing the young bulky mech with. A good lot of them were sniggering stupidly at him. "'Specially femmes as uptight and outdated as that one."

"_Don't_—" Swindle twitched violently, reaching up and smearing the glowing fluid out of his ruined optic as he stumbled toward the booth. He braced himself sloppily on the table with a hateful, shuddering intake, feeling every spiteful optic in the bar fixed on his wide back. "…call me _kid_."

Lockdown just sat back, unaffected by the cracked glass and bleeding slot his would-be business partner was sporting. He scratched at a nick on his own mismatched plating with that creepy claw.

"Call 'em as I scan 'em." The massive bounty hunter looked up, telltale red optics flashing almost malevolently. "How many stellar-cycles you got under your fanbelt, _kid_?"

"Enough."

The rare growl in the young mech's vocals, worsened by the distraction of shuttering and unshuttering his broken optic to clear the energon trickle, metamorphosed quickly enough into the bright, impervious, _bull-headed_ salesman yammer Swindle would become so well-known for. A grin, twisted though it was by pain, followed along with a snappy double-click of his big servos. Desperation put the fuel back in his thrusters, because he needed this 'bot. He _needed_ this sale.

"Enough to make you see the new generation of 'bots has some talent to spare, and connections where that fails!"

And he went off.

He dropped names, he dropped prices (not just put them on the table but _dropped them_ in response to the beastly musclecar's perpetually irritated look, like he should be charging Swindle just for letting him talk even as he was _bleeding from his optic slot_), and generally wormed his way under his new customer's plating with the greasiest, cleanest of charm. When he'd finished his forty-cycle spiel about how he could generally change the other's life at only a _small_ fee with interest on the side, Lockdown squinted at him, then reached back and pushed himself up from the booth, engine woofing.

"Nah."

Swindle felt his pins rattle in his chamber.

"W-what?"

It popped out before he could stop it; hadn't he done every thing right? Who in the world could refuse what he was peddling, especially for a mech in such a dangerous profession?! To refuse his proposition meant certain deactivation! Swindle's processor still locking at the illogicality of it all, the musclecar stepped out of the booth and readjusted his wheels briefly, sending them spinning with a disinterested whirr.

"Don't think I wanna throw my lot in with someone who can't even handle a pissed-off femme half his size," Lockdown grunted, giving the bulky mech a curt nod over his spiked shoulder. "Maybe you'll find someone who will, but I don't think so."

"No! No-no-no-_no_!"

Seized with the panic of a lost customer—_the_ lost customer--as the mech began to stalk away, Swindle fumbled out of the booth and bodily seized the other car around the arm—_the_ arm, the one that looked like it had been ripped clean off of another bot and pasted on by the wires—and looked up at the bigger mech, purple optics glowing desperately.

"I'll… please. Give me another chance, guy! Dis—ah, discount. _Refund_! Promise you won't regret it! Salesman's---_honor!_"

His slick salesman voice thinned, half from the gear-stripping exertion of dragging the gigantic mech back to the table and half from the sudden gush of fear he felt at the boiling _look_ the bounty hunter was dealing him—like Lockdown the Undecided would like nothing more than to disassemble the smaller mech pin by pin and gut him of all his shiny toys he was bragging about.

Whether bravery or greed was the dominating force, Swindle's nerves were stupidly strong enough to hold the other's arm until he was sure Lockdown wouldn't drive off. Letting go, he chuckled weakly, another charming gesture decaying into a sloppy wipe at his leaking optic.

"N-now, you can't judge a 'bot just because he doesn't want to _strike_ a little _lady_. It just wouldn't be _right_," he began gingerly, grin faltering like a flickering light.

"Actually, yeah, that's exactly what I'd judge him on. F'you can't see she's a threat just cos've some pink plating, you ain't suited for this."

Lockdown's wide mouth thinned into a true frown. He pushed the other mech away with an air of finality—of daring the hummer to touch him again with intent to sell—and turned around.

"Makin' a lot of stupid moves, _kid_. Stupid moves'll get you off-lined in this line of business, and the way you're runnin', I'd give you three kliks to function."

But it seemed three kliks and a horrible amount of perseverance (along with some severe, nearly _crippling_ discounts) was sometimes enough, even if it was just for a trial run.

* * *

Lockdown meandered back to his ship, taking his time through the wet streets and, at the end, up the ramp. She opened with a sound like a stuffy yawn and the hulking mech walked in and sat himself down at the command station, settling his weight in the dark and booting her up with a few easy flicks and switches. The ship shuddered around him, waking up; a halting grind started up in her far-off, echoing bowels.

"You wanna complain now?" he rumbled at the flickering screen.

"_No_."

The screen's milky glow, the only source of light in the small ship, revealed the curvy femme perched on a control panel behind him, arms crossed, glaring evilly at the back of his helm. Passing her by as though she were a piece of furniture couldn't have helped his score, but Torque was utterly apoplectic after being given an hour to stew in her own hydraulic fluid. Bored expression unchanged, Lockdown started the engines.

"Good."

He was a bastard, that she knew, but never had it been displayed so _concisely_ to her.

When that scumbag approached her, he acted like he wasn't even _associated_ with her. Forget defending her honor (and forget the fact that she wasn't used to it nor did she expect it), he didn't even care. It was questionable whether he would have moved his crusty smirking aft if the impertinent scammer had attempted to pry her chamber plating off right there! If she thought two hundred on-off stellar-cycles with the brute had earned her some measure of common regard, she was grievously mistaken. He was as rusty and untouched as ever, professionally incorrigible, and something about that only made her angrier.

That itchy, inexplicable anger was all that kept her coming back sometimes, but who didn't have their vices?

"Y'got me a discount," he said after a moment of hostile silence, slow amusement just barely nudging at his ever-present rasp.

"Glad to have helped," she hissed, all acid and charm. She wouldn't have struck the arms-dealer if she hadn't been stretched to the end of her tow-line by five measly, miserable solar-cycles with Lockdown; he could drive her crazy like no one else could, and with _minimal effort_. Torque felt almost guilty for her lapse, but not for that Primus-damned mech with the busted optic.

She glared down out of the red glass vista as though trying to pick the crowded black city apart with her optics, both narrowed to lemon-yellow shards. She paused, then muttered with a stiff jaw, "I don't trust him."

"I don't trust anyone," the musclecar responded flatly, once again completely disregarding her as he fiddled with some coordinates on screen. A miniature bomb went off in the femme's magenta chassis as the last of her patience combusted violently, leaving her aspirating black fumes.

"Fine. Weld your own dumpster. Thanks for the ride, _darling_, now get me back to Peunl," she snapped. She pushed off her perch, heels striking the floor of the bridge with a sharp crack and a sputter like struck flint, and glared at him—his beastly spiked back, the crest of his primitive low-brow helm--poisonously. "I believe I've had my fill of you for quite some time."

Red optics locked on the screen, Lockdown brought her into gear and smiled.


End file.
